Lab Scale Skincare Development

The beginning of the product formulation journey will lead you to lab Scale product development. Lab-scale product development services are designed to provide you with enough product for consumer test marketing and to provide product samples for presentation to prospective retailers, product reviewers, beauty bloggers or for initial sales on your website. These services can help develop your formula, or have you supply them with your formula. Typically they can manufacture a lab-scale 2-10 litre batch of your product. This is an excellent start to the product development process. A good lab-scale developer will have trusted contact manufacturers that they work with.

Lab Equipment

1. Mixers

In most chemistry labs the primary mixing device is a small magnetic stirrer that goes in the bottom of your beaker. But this type of mixer has little use in a cosmetic lab where the viscosity of formulas is much higher. Instead you need an overhead, center stir mixer that can power through high viscosity creams and gels.

The exact mixer you get will depend on the type of products you make most frequently. For example, when making creams, gels, or thicker liquids, a device with a range of 40 – 2000 RPM will probably be adequate. And if you make a lot of emulsions, you might also get a homogenizer.

2. Containers

You’ll need containers to hold your raw materials and formulations. There are three types of containers that every lab needs including raw material containers, prototype making containers, and product storage containers.

For most raw materials, glass jars work best. You can get them in sizes from 4oz up to a gallon, depending on how much of the ingredient you use.

For prototype making containers, you’ll need standard lab beakers ranging from sizes 100mL up to 2000mL. I always like the 500 mL beaker for making most of my new prototypes.

3. Weighing Equipment

While graduated cylinders and pipets are mainstays for measuring quantities in an organic lab, cosmetic labs are more focused on mass measurements rather than volume. Therefore, when setting up a lab it is crucial that you have a scale to accurately measure your ingredients.

There are a wide variety of scales available and the cost can range from rather cheap to obscenely expensive. The exact scales you get depends mostly on the size of the batches you’ll be most often making. At minimum, you’ll want to have a scale that can measure up to 2000 grams with an accuracy of 0.01 g. If you’re doing smaller batches, a scale with a 0.001 g accuracy would be useful.

4. Heating and Cooling Equipment

In college chemistry labs, you might see a glowing blue flame of a Bunsen burner any time you needed to heat up a reaction. But these devices don’t find much use in a cosmetic lab where you rarely need to heat something above 100C. In a cosmetic lab you need a hot plate with a large enough surface to hold your beaker. You should get one that can reach temperatures high enough for any type of batch you will make which will typically be the boiling point of water. This isn’t a problem because most lab hot plates will go over 200°C.

For cooling batches, it’s useful to have a water bath which can simply be a stainless steel container that you fill up with ice and water. You can put your mixing beaker directly into the water bath and change the water to cool the batch rapidly.

5. Testing Equipment

After you’ve finished a cosmetic formulation, you’ll need to test it to ensure that it meets specifications. Again, this will depend on the specific type of product you’re making but for most applications you’ll want to have pH meter and a viscometer (for measuring rheology).

Private Label

Private label manufacturers have stock formulas and you choose from their stock bases for the cosmetic product and scent and the container. The stock bases can usually be slightly modified. They fill the container, label it with your custom label and ship the product.

Pros: This is the fastest way for product development and to bring your product to market. There are no product development costs. There are low minimums on your product and you can see how your product does on the market without putting a lot of money into it.

Cons: You have no control over the ownership of your product. If the manufacturer decides to discontinue a stock base you are using, you have to use another base of theirs and change your label with the listing of ingredients, plus it will be a different formulation that you may not like as much. The manufacturer may go out of business or you may not like their business practices but you are unable to take your business elsewhere since they own the formula. They will not give you the formula. All of these problems have happened to clients of mine that came to me very frustrated.

Contract Manufacturing

Contract manufacturers manufacture from a formula you own, fill and ship your product. You own the formula. You can contract a cosmetic formulator to create the formula, create the formula yourself or go through the manufacturer if they offer the service. Some manufacturers have a cosmetic formulator on staff and they work with you to customize a formulation for you and then at this same facility it is manufactured, filled and shipped to you.

Pros: You own the formula. If you are not happy with the manufacturer you can go to another manufacturer with your formula.

Cons: It is more expensive to have a custom formula developed and it takes more time for product development and longer to market. High minimums are usually required.

Questions to Ask A Cosmetic Manufacturer Before Your Start

You should know if they are a private label or contract manufacturer or both and then ask the questions below that relate to them.

1. How long have they been in business?
2. Are they a cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) facility? FDA compliant?
3. Water used? Is it purified to USP standards?
4. Lab Testing-What types of lab testing do they perform?: Do they do CTFA Challenge Testing? Do they do stability testing? or Does the formula need to already passed testing at a lab before coming to them? What tests do they recommend? Do they do microbial testing of every completed batch?
5. Can they produce the products that you need? Are the specialized?
6. Do they work with the ingredients in your formula? Can they handle your formula procedures?
7. What other cosmetic products can they manufacture?
8. What are their minimums?
9. What are their maximums for production? (If the product does very well, can they meet the demand?)
10. Pilot Run and Scaling: How do they do this?
11. How much for samples?
12. How many times will they allow you to try the product from the pilot run and tweak it before they charge more?
13. What is the turn around time from when you place your order?
14. What are the R&D (research & development) costs?
15. Ingredient Sourcing- how does this work? can they help you with this, do they have some raw ingredients they buy in bulk you can use?
16. What are their mixing capabilities?
17. What Equipment Do they have/use? Stainless Steel? Propeller agitation?
18. Equipment Used in Filling?
19. What type of filling system do they have? Does it work with the containers you will be using? Can they do heat fill tubes? How many containers can be filled in 24 hours?
20. Do they do Induction Sealing? Shrink Wrap? Labeling?
21. Who will be making the product? Is the person going to be on site when the product is being made?
22. Do they do any documentation and inspection of the product while being made?
23. Can you visit the facility? (Why not?)
24. Timely Delivery of finished products: Cost?
25. Payment Terms?
26. What is their Refund Policy?
27. Policy for damaged goods on arrival?
28. Cost for additional Runs?
29. Do they have a referral from another customer? (contact this customer and ask their experience)

Ownership of your Formula

If the manufacturer makes any adjustments to the formula or production procedure you want to make it clear that you still own the formula, not them. Make sure to read the contract and that it states this.

Canadian Cosmetic Contract Manufacturers and Private Label Companies